In general, a vehicle has three basic, necessary abilities including a “driving force” as an ability of “advancing”, a “steering force” as an ability of “turning”, and a “braking force” as an ability of “stopping”.
The “driving force” is a power, i.e., a torque generated by a power source of an internal combustion engine (hereinafter simply referred to as “engine”) in response to an amount of depression of an accelerator pedal and transmitted through a transmission to driving wheels. The “driving force” is thus obtained as a reaction force against the frictional force of the driving wheels and a road surface allowing the driving wheels to travel thereon. The “steering force” is obtained by a steering device capable of changing the advancing direction of, for example, front wheels in response to the operation amount of a steering wheel. The “braking force” is generated in response to the amount of depression of a brake pedal by slowing down or stopping the rotations of the driving wheels to generate a frictional force of the driving wheels and the road surface.
In general, the accelerator pedal and the brake pedal are located in the neighborhood of the positions of the driver's feet. Many drivers depress selectively the accelerator pedal or the brake pedal only with his right foot to control the “driving force” and the “braking force”, viz., to control a vehicle speed.
In that case, for example, a vehicle with an automatic transmission (hereinafter simply referred to as “AT car”) is provided with no clutch pedal, thereby causing some drivers to drive his or her car while depressing the brake pedal with his or her left foot and depressing the accelerator pedal with his or her right foot. In this way, there are some drivers who drive their cars separately using their left foot and right foot to depress the brake pedal and the accelerator pedal, respectively. For such drivers separately using both their feet for depressing the brake pedal and the accelerator pedal, there is a possible case in that the brake pedal is depressed while the accelerator pedal is not being released by the driver or the accelerator pedal is depressed while the brake pedal is not being released by the driver.
Thus, the concurrent depressions of the accelerator pedal and the brake pedal are apt to lead to deterioration in drivability.
There has so far been known a vehicle control apparatus which can reduce an engine torque in the event that the accelerator pedal and the brake pedal are depressed at the same time (see, for example, Patent Document 1).
The previously mentioned conventional vehicle is constructed to reduce the torque outputted by the engine with the fuel injection amount of the engine being temporarily reduced in the case that the accelerator pedal and the brake pedal are depressed at the same time.
Citation List
Patent Literature
PTL 1: Japanese Patent Publication No. S62-051737